“Do not touch that gun,” snapped the robber, as if he were psychic.
Wilkins was not a man who frightened easily. He stared at the robber, taking in every inch of his appearance. “You’ll never get away with it,” he said contemptuously.
The robber spoke in a cold, steady voice. “I have before and I will do so again.” He motioned toward the imposing safe that stood nearly eight feet high. “Open it!”
Wilkins looked the robber square in the eye. “No, I don’t think I will.”
The robber wasted no time. He wrapped the muzzle of his automatic in a heavy towel and shot the teller between the eyes. Then he turned to Wilkins. “I may leave here without a dime, but you won’t live to see it.”
Wilkins stood, horrified, staring down at the spreading pool of blood around Fred’s head. He looked at the smoldering towel where the bullet had passed through, well knowing it was unlikely that anyone in the building had heard the gunshot. As if in a trance, he walked to the safe and began turning the combination lock to the required numbers. After half a minute, he pulled down on the latch and the massive steel door swung open.
“Take it and be damned!” he hissed.
The robber merely smiled and shot Wilkins in the temple. The bank manager had barely struck the floor when the robber strode quickly to the front door, slammed it shut, hung a CLOSED sign in the window, and pulled down the shades. Then he methodically cleaned out the safe of all bills, transferring them into a laundry bag he carried tied around his waist under his shirt. When the sack was filled until it bulged in every seam, he stuffed the remaining bills in his pant pockets and boots. The safe cleaned of all money, the robber stared briefly at the gold and silver coins inside and took just one gold souvenir.
There was a heavy iron rear door to the bank that opened onto a narrow street. The robber unlocked the door’s inside latch, cracked the door open, and scanned the street. It was lined on the opposite side with residential houses.
A group of young boys were playing baseball a block from the bank. Not good. This was entirely unexpected by the robber. In his many hours of observing the streets around the Cook Bank, this was the first time he had found children playing in the street behind the bank. He was on a time schedule and had to reach the railyard and his secret boxcar in twelve minutes. Shouldering the bag so his face was shielded on the right side, he walked around the ball game in progress and continued up the street, where he ducked into an alley.
For the most part, the boys ignored him. Only one stared at the poorly dressed man toting a big sack over his right shoulder. What struck the boy as odd was that the man wore a Mexican sombrero, a style that was seldom seen around Rhyolite. Most men in town wore fedoras, derbies, or miner’s caps. There was also something else about the raggedy man…Then another boy yelled, and the boy turned back to the game, barely in time to catch a pop fly.
The robber tied the sack around his shoulders so that it hung on his back. The bicycle he’d parked earlier behind a dentist’s office was sitting there behind a barrel that had been placed to catch runoff water from the building’s drainpipe. He mounted the seat and began pedaling along Armagosa Street, past the red-light district, until he came to the railyard.
A brakeman was walking along the track toward the caboose at the end of the train. The robber couldn’t believe his bad luck. Despite his meticulous planning, fate had dealt him a bad hand. Unlike with his other robberies and murders, this time he had been noticed by a stupid young boy. And now this brakeman. Never had he encountered so many eyes that might have observed him during his escape. There was nothing he could do but see it through.
Luckily, the brakeman did not look in the robber’s direction. He was going from car to car checking the grease in the axle boxes of the trucks and wheels the boxcars rode on. If the brass sleeve that rotated inside the box did not receive enough lubricant, the friction would heat the end of the axle to a dangerous level. The weight of the car could break the axle off and cause a disastrous crash.
As the robber cycled past, the brakeman did not bother to look up. He instead went about his business, trying to complete his inspection before the train departed for Tonopah and then on to Sacramento.
Already, the engineer was looking at his gauges to make sure he had enough steam to move the heavy train. The robber hoped the brakeman would not turn back and witness him entering his private boxcar. Quickly, he unlocked and slid open the door. He threw the bicycle inside and then climbed a small ladder up to the door, dragging the heavy money sack over the threshold.
Once inside the boxcar, the robber peered down the length of the train. The brakeman was climbing aboard the caboose, which housed the train crew. There was no sign he’d witnessed the robber enter the boxcar.
Secure inside his palatial car, the robber relaxed and read a copy of the Rhyolite Herald. He could not help but wonder what the paper would print the following day about the bank robbery and the killing of its manager and teller. Again, as he had so many times earlier, he felt no remorse. The deaths never entered his mind again.
Later, besides the mystery of how the robber/killer had escaped without a trace, the other puzzle was the wagon found outside of town on the road toward Bullfrog. The wagon was empty and appeared to have been driven by a dummy. The posse that chased it down was mystified.
Sheriff Josh Miller did put two and two together, but his speculation went nowhere. Nothing made sense. The desperado left no clues.
The robbery and murders in Rhyolite became another enigma that went unsolved.
4
THE SUMMER SUNLIGHT HEIGHTENED THE CONTRAST of colors in the mile-high altitude of Colorado. The sky was free of clouds, a vivid blue that spread over the city of Denver like a quilt. The temperature was a comfortable eighty-one degrees.
Isaac Bell closed the door to his stateroom and left the train by stepping off the observation platform at the rear of the Pullman car. He paused to look up at the clock tower of the Gothic-style Union Station. Built of stone hauled down from the Rocky Mountains, the imposing three-story structure stretched a quarter of a mile.
The arrowhead-tipped hands of the huge clock read 11:40. Bell lifted his large gold watch from the vest pocket of his tailored linen suit and glanced at the hands that pointed to Roman numerals. His time was 11:43. He smiled at himself with satisfaction, knowing for certain that the big clock-tower clock was three minutes slow.
He walked down the redbrick platform to the baggage car, identified his trunks, and hailed a porter. “My name is Bell. Could you please see that my trunks are sent to the Brown Palace Hotel?”
The porter smiled broadly at the gold coin Bell laid in his hand and rubbed it almost reverently. “Yes, sir, I’ll deliver them myself.”